Jessica’s hands shake as she takes the two fivers and stuffs them into the envelope with Jack’s letters. Then she leans out of the carriage window and kisses Sally. ‘I love you so, Mr Goldberg.’
Sally rubs his cheek where Jessica has kissed him, a rueful smile on his great melon-face. ‘Maybe also you can do me a big favour, Miss Bergman,’ he says shyly.
‘Maybe, now we do business, you can call me Sally?’
‘And you call me Jessie,’ Jessica whispers, her eyes brimming again.
‘We got a business, Jessie,’ Sally says, smiling hugely, then he extends his great bear paw. Jessie takes it into her own small hand and they shake, business partners no less.
‘I won’t let yiz down, Solly. I swear it.’ There is a shrill blast from the conductor’s whistle. ‘All aboard what’s goin’ aboard!’ he shouts and blows his whistle again. Jessica looks anxiously at the platform gate, just in time to see Moishe with his arm around Richard Runche KC who, from the way he appears to be leaning on the young man for support, is somewhat the worse for wear. Moishe holds the barrister’s battered suitcase in his free hand and is trying to run, though Runche’s legs flop like a rag doll’s, t,wo steps behind and seemingly only barely able to connect with the surface of the platform. In the lawyer’s coat pocket, bobbing dangerously up and down, is a bottle of claret.
Jessica gasps, holding her hand to her mouth as Moishe staggers to the carriage, dropping the suitcase at Solly’s feet as he passes. The train starts to move away and Moishe hardly has time to open the carriage door and push the top part of his burden onto the train. He begins to run alongside the departing train, feeding the remaining half of the barrister piecemeal onto the carriage. Finally, some twenty yards down the platform, Moishe manages to get Runche’s feet onto the train and to shut the carriage door.
Jessica, stuck at the carriage window and unable to go to Moishe’s immediate aid, is trying hard not to laugh.
Meanwhile, Solly has picked up the lawyer’s suitcase and handed it to Jessica. Then, as if he has suddenly remembered something, he starts to dig frantically into his jacket pockets, attempting at the same time to keep up with the moving train. At last he finds what he is looking for and he thrusts a piece of folded paper at Jessica. ‘Compliments Mrs Goldberg,’ he shouts, ‘take quick, Jessie!’
Jessica reaches out of the compartment window and takes the piece of paper from Solly and absently thrusts it into the manila envelope. ‘Goodbye, Moishe!’ she shouts. ‘Goodbye, Solly, I love you both!’
Moishe looks up, panting furiously. He lifts one hand from his knee and waves weakly, unable to speak, while Solly has his hands on his hips, also trying to catch his breath.
Jessica watches into the fading light until they appear as two tiny figures on the brightly lit platform, the one round as a ball and the other thin as a school pencil. The train takes a slight bend in the maze of crisscrossing silver tracks leading out of Central Station and the Goldbergs are finally lost to her sight. Jessica gets up to help her drunken travelling companion to his feet and safely into the compartment.
The train is well into the night and a million stars are pinned to the blanket of darkness as Jessica watches out of the compartment window. Richard Runche is slumped asleep beside her though thankfully not snoring.
He has woken several times for a few moments and each time he’s looked blearily at Jessica and touched his battered derby. ‘Unconscionable, my dear, must apologise, shocking, shocking,’ he mumbles, reaching for the bottle in his jacket pocket, uncorking it clumsily and taking a long swig. ‘Hair of the dog, m’dear,’ he says.
Re-corking the bottle, he replaces it into his jacket pocket and, almost immediately, slips back into a drunken slumber.
The carriage is in darkness and the other four passengers are attempting to sleep, so that Jessica is unable to read the final letter from Jack. She has her feet placed on the ‘Compliments Mrs Goldberg’ basket, which has been moved to the floor, but decides she should wait until breakfast before opening it, hoping to share its contents with her badly hungover companion.
The light from the passageway falls across the lawyer’s face and Jessica looks at him kindly. He was true to his word and, after visiting Jessica in the asylum that day, he set out to find Mary Simpson, finally locating her in an Aboriginal camp near Yanco. Mary took him to the tin hut where, just as Jessica had said, they found the tiny Chinese silk dress under the straw mattress — the dress the aunties had given Jessica for her baby. After talking to Mary, who fully corroborated what Jessica had told him, Richard Runche KC was soon convinced that Jessica’s story was true in every aspect and that Meg’s so-called son — Joseph ‘Joey’ Thomas, the heir to Riverview Station — is indeed Jessica’s child.
However, Runche was too much of a realist to believe that he could win the child back for its true mother in a court of law. The Chinese dress was, at best, circumstantial evidence and could easily enough be construed as yet another example of Jessica’s delusions. The word of an Aboriginal woman who claimed to have been present shortly after the birth of the child would not be taken against that of Hester Bergman and her daughter, Meg Thomas.
Furthermore, he told himself, even if he did make a reasonable case for the child, a judge, deciding in the final sense what was advantageous for the boy, would be unlikely to give custody to the true mother.
Joseph ‘Joey’ Thomas, the judge would conclude, is likely to enjoy every possible advantage as the child of Meg Thomas and little or none under the care of Jessica, a woman who had just spent a period of nearly four years in a mental asylum.
The barrister decided he had only one thing going for him. He had to confront Hester and Meg and threaten them with the prospect of a claim on the property by George Thomas and any other family members he might be able to dig up. He’d tell the two women outright that he would inform the Thomas relatives that a serious doubt existed as to the true parentage of the child, that Jack’s son and heir was not from his own loins. Furthermore, he’d say that he has reliable witnesses who are prepared to testify to this fact and that in his experience, the news of a fortune to be divided would bring the familial wolves howling to the door.
However, this meant that, in return for what concessions he could wring from Meg Thomas for Jessica, she in turn must give up all claims to her child. Richard Runche KC reasoned that, harsh as this outcome might seem, it was a better solution than leaving his client to rot in an asylum where she’d have no hope of being reunited with her child anyway.
And so he rides out to Riverview Station on his hired horse to confront Meg and Hester. He had spent the past three nights in Jessica’s hut and he looks even more derelict than usual. He sets out after a breakfast of half a bottle of claret and a tin of sardines and arrives at the Thomas homestead around mid-morning.
It is Hester who first comes to the door. She takes one look at the forlorn-looking little man standing in front of her and it is obvious she doesn’t much like what she sees.
‘If you want work, see the foreman at the office. If you want something to eat, go round the back and ask the cook,’ she instructs bluntly, beginning to turn away. Richard Runche raises his battered derby. ‘Ah, a moment please, madam?’ Hester turns haughtily. ‘You must be Mrs Bergman, Mrs Hester Bergman?’
Hester looks surprised. ‘Yes?’ she replies, her voice a little more cautious as she notes Runche’s cultured tone. ‘How do you do, madam? May I introduce myself? Richard Runche. You may well have heard of me?’ ‘I really don’t think so, Mr Runche,’ Hester sniffs.
‘I met your youngest daughter Jessica at the William D’arcy Simon trial.’ ‘Who?’ .
‘Oh yes, how careless of me. You would probably know him locally by the sobriquet Billy Simple. I was the counsel for the poor lad’s defence.’ ‘Fat lot of good you did him,’ Hester snorts, her confidence now fully restored. Joe had told her about the drunken barrister Jessie had been to see on the idiot’s behalf. ‘If you want my daughter Jessie, she doesn’t live here, she’s in Sydney.’
‘Well, yes, I am aware of that. I have come to see your other daughter, Mrs Meg Thomas. Is she in?’ Runche now asks brightly, ignoring Hester’s snub.
Just then Meg comes to the door. ‘Who is it, Mother?’ ‘This is William D’arcy Simon’s lawyer,’ Hester says tartly. ‘Who?’